Is there a way to make someone appear to other players as he have armor on, but give no actual armor protection?
In case you don't find a perfect answer, you could always give the player almost dead armor, so that one hit with a fist would destroy it... And just make sure it stays like that
You could do this with Spout's packet listeners, and possibly manually sending packets. http://mc.kev009.com/Protocol#Entity_Equipment_.280x05.29